Technology News

LONDON (AP) — Facebook’s WhatsApp faces a complaint from European Union consumer groups who say the chat service has been unfairly pressuring users to accept a new privacy update in what it calls a breach of the bloc’s regulations.

The European Consumer Organisation, or BEUC, filed a complaint Monday over the way WhatsApp has brought in changes to its terms of service and privacy policy, saying they aren’t transparent or easily understood by users.

Many WhatsApp users switched to other chat apps like Signal and Telegram because of privacy concerns when the update was rolled out earlier this year because of concerns the changes would give Facebook access to more information on users.

“WhatsApp has been bombarding users for months with aggressive and persistent pop-up messages to force them to accept its new terms of use and privacy policy,” BEUC Director General Monique Goyens said. “They’ve been telling users that their access to their app will be cut off if they do not accept the new terms. Yet consumers don’t know what they’re actually accepting.”

BEUC and consumer rights groups from eight member countries filed the complaint to the EU’s executive Commission and the bloc’s network of consumer authorities.

WhatsApp said the complaint is based on a misunderstanding of the update’s purpose and effect and would welcome the opportunity to explain it to the BEUC.

“Our recent update explains the options people have to message a business on WhatsApp and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data,” WhatsApp said in a prepared statement. “The update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook, and does not impact the privacy of your messages with friends or family, wherever they are in the world.”

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Swarms of Chinese vessels have dumped human waste and wastewater for years in a disputed area of the South China Sea, causing algae blooms that have damaged coral reefs and threatened fish in an unfolding catastrophe, a U.S.-based expert said Monday.

Satellite images over the last five years show how human waste, sewage and wastewater have accumulated and caused algae in a cluster of reefs in the Spratlys region where hundreds of Chinese fishing ships have anchored in batches, said Liz Derr, who heads Simularity Inc., a software company creating artificial intelligence technologies for satellite imagery analysis.

At least 236 ships were spotted in the atoll, internationally known as Union Banks, on June 17 alone, she said at a Philippine online news forum on China’s actions in the South China Sea, which Beijing has claimed virtually in its entirety.

“When the ships don’t move, the poop piles up,” Derr said. “The hundreds of ships that are anchored in the Spratlys are dumping raw sewage onto the reefs they are occupying.”

Chinese officials did not immediately react to Derr’s assessment of the environmental damage, but have said in the past that they have taken steps to protect the fisheries stock and the environment in the South China Sea. Aside from the Chinese, Vietnamese forces have also occupied some coral outcrops in Union Banks, which is also claimed by the Philippines, although it has no presence in the vast atoll.

Department of Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Eduardo Menez in Manila said the findings would have to be assessed and validated by Philippine authorities before a decision on whether to lodge a protest against China could be made.

“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions and we are close to the point of no return,” Derr said.

She warned that schools of fish, including migratory tuna, breed in the reefs that are being damaged and could cause fish stocks to considerably decline in an offshore area that is a key regional food source.

Separately, China’s military said it chased a U.S. warship out of another disputed area of the South China Sea on Monday after Washington warned an attack on the Philippines might activate a mutual defense treaty.

Beijing affirmed its claims to portions of the sea that also are claimed by Southeast Asia governments. It rejected the Biden administration’s declaration of support Sunday for an 2016 international tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines that threw out most of them.

China is increasingly assertive about pressing its territorial claims, which are fueling tension with neighbors including Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.

China’s People’s Liberation Army said it sent ships and planes after the U.S.S. Benfold entered waters claimed by Beijing around the Paracel Islands.

In March, Philippine authorities spotted more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels at Whitsun Reef, in the northeastern periphery of Union Banks, and demanded that China withdraw them from the area. China ignored the demand for weeks, while continuing to assert the reef is its own territory.

The Philippines argued that Whitsun Reef lies well within an internationally recognized stretch of waters where it has exclusive rights to exploit fisheries, oil, gas and other sea resources. It cited the international tribunal’s 2016 ruling that invalidated China’s vast claims to the waterway on historical grounds and unanimously upheld the Philippines’ sovereign rights to the so-called exclusive economic zone.

A few hundred protesters held a noisy rally Monday in front of the Chinese Consulate in Manila to mark the fifth anniversary of the ruling, which China ignored and continues to defy. The protesters lashed out at President Rodrigo Duterte, who has nurtured closer ties with Beijing, for refusing to aggressively demand that China comply with the landmark ruling.

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Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

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MADRID (AP) — The Spanish government will invest 4.3 billion euros ($5.1 billion) from its share of European pandemic recovery funds to revamp its automobile industry and steer it toward manufacturing electric vehicles and their components, the prime minister announced on Monday.

Pedro Sánchez said that the investment will be “a real revolution” for the Spanish economy, bringing in an estimated 19 billion euros ($22.5 billion) in additional private investment.

His left-wing coalition government wants to inject the money in all segments of the car manufacturing chain, from lithium extraction to electric battery cell assembly lines, the leader of Spain’s ruling socialist party said.

“The spontaneous functioning of the market is not going to achieve by itself the kickstarting of a new model that involves so many industries,” he said.

Sanchez was speaking at an event to introduce the first of seven plans to transform Spain’s industries with the 140 billion euros ($166 billion) that the country is expected to receive over next six years from the EU’s Next Generation funds.

“Our state needs to be an entrepreneurial state in a tight alliance with the main stakeholders,” he added, announcing that the government will appoint an industry leader to lead the joint private and public efforts.

The Spanish Cabinet is set to approve the automobile plan in its weekly meeting on Tuesday. Companies will be able to apply for funding immediately after, with the first disbursements expected to arrive in September.

The plan aims to increase the industry’s share of Spain’s gross domestic product from the current 10% to 15% by 2030 and add new jobs to the pool of 2 million workers. It will affect companies beyond automakers or their suppliers, Sánchez said, including mining, telecommunications and power utilities.

The prime minister also said that the country is investing 1 billion euros in stimulating electric vehicle sales and that a public investment of another billion euros will go to install new public electric plug-in points, of which the country has only a few.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — In a gesture of goodwill to the United States, the European Union on Monday put work on plans for a digital tax levy on hold for the moment to concentrate on finalizing the historic tax decision endorsed by the Group of 20 nations over the weekend.

In the face of criticism from U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, the European Commission said its work on the levy that would hit American technology companies would go on ice to allow for smooth cooperation on the political and technical hurdles that still need to be addressed on the G-20 tax decision before the end of October.

“We will work together to reach this global agreement,” said EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni. “I informed the Secretary Yellen of our decision to put on hold the proposal of the Commission of a digital levy to allow us to be concentrated, working hand-in-hand, to achieve the last mile of this historic agreement.”

Finance ministers from the G-20 major economies endorsed a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15%, a measure aimed at putting a floor under tax rates and discouraging companies from using low-rate countries as tax havens.

The global minimum proposal faces political and technical hurdles before it takes effect. Details are to be ironed out in coming weeks at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, followed by a final endorsement by G-20 presidents and prime ministers at an Oct. 30-31 meeting in Rome.

Countries then need to legislate the rate into their own laws. The idea is for countries where firms have their headquarters to tax those companies’ foreign earnings at home if those earnings go untaxed in low-rate countries. That would remove the reason for using complex accounting schemes to move profits to subsidiaries in low-tax nations, and where the companies may do little or no actual business.

In addition, the EU has also tried to focus on companies that make profits in countries where they have no physical presence, such as through digital advertising or online retail. Countries led by France have started imposing unilateral “digital” taxes that have hit the biggest U.S. tech companies, including Google, Amazon and Facebook.

The U.S. calls those unfair trade practices, and has threatened retaliation through import taxes.

Germany also focused more on the global corporate tax measures agreed upon than on EU plans for digital taxation.

“The most important step is that we have an agreement on a global minimum tax and that we also have an agreement on how we better tax big high-profitable companies, including those that are active as global digital giants,” said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. Because of that, he said that not pushing ahead now with EU-only plans “is also a sign that we are really making the progress to get a global agreement.”

The European Commission’s announcement came as Yellen was meeting in Brussels with eurozone counterparts and high-level EU officials.

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Cubans facing the country’s worst economic crisis in decades took to the streets over the weekend. In turn, authorities blocked social media sites in an apparent effort to stop the flow of information into, out of and within the beleaguered nation.

Restricting internet access has become a tried-and-true method of stifling dissent by authoritarian regimes around the world, alongside government-supported disinformation campaigns and propaganda. On the extreme side, regimes like China and North Korea exert tight control over what regular citizens can access online. Elsewhere, service blockages are more limited, often cutting off common social platforms around elections and times of mass protests.

There was no formal organizer of Sunday’s protests; people found out about the rallying points over social media, mostly on Twitter and Facebook, the platforms most used by Cubans. The thousands of Cubans who took to the streets — protesters and pro-government activists alike — wielded smartphones to capture images and send them to relatives and friends or post them online.

On Monday, Cuban authorities were blocking Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram, said Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, a London-based internet monitoring firm. “This does seem to be a response to social media-fueled protest,” he said. Twitter did not appear to be blocked, though Toker noted Cuba could cut it off if it wants to.

While the recent easing of access by Cuban authorities to the internet has increased social media activity, Toker said, the level of censorship has also risen. Not only does the cutoff block out external voices, he said, it also squelches “the internal voice of the population who have wanted to speak out.”

Internet access in Cuba has been expensive and relatively rare until recently. The country was “basically offline” until 2008, then gradually entered a digital revolution, said Ted Henken, a Latin America expert at Baruch College, City University of New York. The biggest change, he noted, came in December 2018 when Cubans got access to mobile internet for the first time via data plans purchased from the state telecom monopoly. These days, more than half of all Cubans have internet access, Henken said.

Many Cubans now have real-time, anywhere-you-are access to the internet and the ability to share information among themselves, he added. Since early 2019, this access has facilitated regular, if smaller, events and protests on the island. In response, the government has periodically shut down access to social media, mostly to hide its repressive tactics from both citizens and foreigners, he said.

The Cuban government also restricts independent media in Cuba and “routinely blocks access within Cuba to many news websites and blogs,” according to Human Rights Watch.

Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases, as it suffers the consequences of U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. The protests now, the largest in decades, are “absolutely and definitely fueled by increased access to internet and smartphones in Cuba,” said Sebastian Arcos, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

Social media posts from within and outside of Cuba are “not the root causes of the rebellion, but they are a factor in connecting the desperation, disaffection that exists in the island,” said Arturo López-Levy, an assistant political science professor at Holy Names University in California.

López-Levy, who grew up a few blocks from Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, said the country’s current leader has embraced the economic potential of digital technology far more than his predecessors, but may have calculated that a large segment of Cubans will accept a temporary internet shutdown if it helps restore order in the streets.

Elsewhere, government internet shutdowns after or ahead of protests have also become commonplace, whether for a few hours or extending for months. In Ethiopia, there was a three-week shutdown in July 2020 after civil unrest. The internet blackout in the Tigray region has stretched on for months. In Belarus, the internet went down for more than two days after an August 2020 election seen as rigged sparked mass protests. Mobile internet service repeatedly went down during weekend protests for months afterwards.

A decade ago during the Arab Spring, when social media was still in its early years and Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the Middle East faced bloody uprisings that were broadcast on social media, headlines declared the movements “Twitter Revolutions” and experts debated about just how important a role social media played in the events. Ten years later, there is no question that social media and private chat platforms have become an essential organizing tool. Restricting them, in turn, is a routine move to suppress dissent. Internet service was disrupted in Cali, Colombia during May anti-government protests.

This year has also seen disruptions in Armenia, Uganda, Iran, Chad, Senegal and the Republic of Congo.

But authoritarian regimes aren’t the only ones getting into the act. India routinely shuts down the internet during times of unrest. Toker of NetBlocks said the imposition of internet restrictions in Cuba follows an emerging global pattern and not always in the countries you most expect them, such as a recent Nigerian cutoff of Twitter. On the plus side, he said, the world is much more aware of these incidents because it’s easier to monitor and report them remotely.

On Sunday, all of Cuba went offline for less than 30 minutes, after which there were several hours of intermittent but large outages, said Doug Madory of Kentik, a network management company. He said large internet outages were very rare in Cuba until very recently.

“There was an outage in January just for mobile service following the ‘27N’ protests,” Madory said, referring to a movement of Cuban artists, journalists and other members of civil society who marched on the Ministry of Culture on Nov. 27, 2020, demanding freedom and democracy.

Henken said he doesn’t believe the government would shut off access for an extended period of time, even though that is its go-to tactic for dissidents and activists.

“The problem they have now is that it’s not a handful of activists or artists or independent journalists — it’s now a massive swath of the population all throughout the country,” he said. “So the genie is out of the bottle. They’re trying to put it back in.”

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AP Havana correspondent Andrea Rodriguez and AP technology reporter Matt O’Brien contributed to this article.

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